BTOES Health: Key Themes

1. Integrating CI Methodologies: creating a single vision and strategy for healthcare organisations

As a result of different phases of leadership, a number of the more mature healthcare organisations have a series of different methodologies that they have implemented over the course of their lean journey. This is causing a lot of confusion with staff and leaders as to the right and up to date direction that is required. This is causing a mis-alignment of strategy and a muddled vision. What is required is clarity on their vision, which sytems they need to prioritise and how they are going to go about using it to meet their wider business objectives.

2. What should be the role of leadership and how can Operational Excellence professionals get their support for internal programmes and initiatives?

For phenomenal transformative change and supreme Operational Excellence to be experienced in Healthcare organizations, committed leadership, allocated resources of time and staff and financial investment is a necessity.

The top organizations have and have had phenomenal leadership, so those OpEx professionals struggling to get any buy-in for programs need commitment, support and encouragement from their leaders. Without this, teams are unable to facilitate any program adoption, mindset change or methodology implementation, OR tackle bottlenecks and address challenges they are experiencing.

3. Creating the mindset for accelerated embedding of BPE throughout the organisation

For rapid adoption of any performance improvement programs, it is imperative to get firstly the buy-in of the leaders of the key teams that have been identified as needing improvement. It’s then key to ensure the support of those leaders to get their teams to adopt the performance improvement measures being put in place – for example, new systems and processes.

4. Transitioning to Lean and other CI methodologies

Whilst there are several organisations that are clear OpEx leaders (e.g. Virginia Mason, Cleveland Clinic, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Kaiser Permanente), the majority of organizations in the Healthcare sector are lagging behind in implementing any sort of improvement system - or, they are still early on in their journey with a lot to learn.

There are lots of questions around, where to start, what to implement, which part of the business to focus on, how to get buy in from upper management and adoption for frontline staff, and much more. Ultimately the whole issue of engaging teams, and getting them to adopt that which will improve the performance of their department or area is a huge challenge for OpEx professionals.

5. Sustainable Performance Improvement

How do OpEx professionals get to implement performance improvement measures with a fixed, long term mindset shift so that after they have left the department, they know those ways of working remain a part of the way those people now work?

A lot of companies don’t have huge OpEx teams so it’s about working smarter to fast track process improvement roll out in the right areas of the business, with the right, key people that will produce the biggest impact.